“..our best built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows.” – “The Great Dark.” Mark Twain. Author Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr. Thirty-five years of speaking for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for […]

Observations A majority of fragile-community residents (54%) say they would like the police to spend more time in their community, while just 5% say they would like the police to spend less time there. As to moving, three-fourths cite crime as a major reason (51%) or minor reason (25%) for wanting to do so. But […]

Observations 56 percent of Americans believe that crime needs to be reduced. 68 percent of Americans believe that crime is increasing. Author Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr. Thirty-five years of speaking for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of […]

Observations A small reduction in violent crime for the first six months of 2017 is good news, and we all hope it continues, but declaring that violent crime is declining or will decline for all of 2017 is a stretch at best. When compared to twenty years of crime data, the 2017 numbers are mushy and somewhat […]

Observations Prison populations fell considerably. Why? What are the impacts for crime and criminal justice policy? Author Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr. Thirty-five years of speaking for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of […]

Secret Service Police Vehicle Overview When you have 20 to 40 percent of Americans worried about street crime, and 65 percent concerned about cybercrime, it explains a lot as to our crime policies and our views of criminality and criminal justice policy. Author Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr. Thirty-five years of speaking for national and state criminal […]

Overview This article provides an overview of two recent documents from Gallup, one dealing with national and local perceptions of crime (is crime increasing?) and a second focusing on fear of walking alone at night. There is no difference between Republicans and Democrats– 66% of each say there is more crime nationally. Concern that crime nationally is […]

Overview Per “Criminal Victimization” from the Bureau of Justice Statistics for 2015 and 2016 (The National Crime Survey), violent crimes went from 5 million violent victimizations to 5.7 million violent victimizations. When examing the 2015 and 2016 rates from “Criminal Victimization,” the rate for violent crime was 18.7 in 2015 and the rate for 2016 was […]

Observations 2014 to 2015, the largest one-year percentage rise in the U.S. homicide rate since 1968. The number of homicides in the big cities increased by 10.8 percent between 2015 and 2016. Most large cities experienced homicide increases in 2015 and 2016. Author Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr. Thirty-five years of speaking for national and state […]

Observation If you are looking for a national summation of data, violent crime is up per the FBI, property crime is down in all three indexes, and Gallup states that personal crime dropped slightly. For a comprehensive overview of crime in America, see National Crime Rates. Author Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr. Thirty-five years of speaking for […]

Author Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr. Thirty-five years of speaking for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Post-Masters’ Certificate of Advanced Study-Johns Hopkins University. Article Three […]

Police Van Observation Half (51 percent) of violent victimizations from 2012 to 2015 were intraracial. Author Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr. Thirty-five years of speaking for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information […]

Observations Antonin (Anthony) Scalia (deceased) and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (current) were friends and Associate Justices for the U.S. Supreme Court. They were fierce ideological opponents. Both agreed that their friendship and willingness to debate made their Supreme Court decisions stronger, and their personal lives better. We need to move from argument winning to problem-solving. Author Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr. Thirty-five […]

Observations To the tens of thousands of victims of increasing violent crime, telling them that, statistically, they have never lived in safer times seems uncouth and disrespectful. Lacking social indicators as to poverty or jobs (unemployment is currently at an all-time low), the only explanation for the rise in violent crime is the morale of […]

Observations Numerous newspaper editorials and many advocates disputed reports of rising crime, saying that we have never lived in safer times. But hundreds of articles cited increases in violent crime for their states and cities. See Crime in America for an updated overview of violent crime in recent years. Author Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr. Thirty-five years of […]

Chief Lawrence Battiste of the Mobile Police Department in Alabama sadly reports the death of Officer Justin Billa. Officer Billa was shot and killed as he and another officer attempted to contact and apprehend a murder suspect. Officers received a call of a woman lying in the street. They determined the victim had been murdered... […]

The Texas Board of Pardon and Paroles yesterday unanimously recommended clemency for Thomas Bartlett Whitaker, the first time in a decade the BPP has recommended against a death sentence. Whitaker orchestrated the murder of his family and his father, the only surviving victim, has been campaigning to save him from the death chamber. I mention […]

Calling illegal-gun trafficking “contagious,” a Chicago researcher says that despite his city's strict gun control, someone who wants to use a weapon to commit a crime can easily obtain one using social media or other networks on the underground market.

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam (R) is a national leader in leveraging evidence-based policies to sustain the state’s strong fiscal position, foster economic growth, and improve government efficiency. Over the governor’s seven years in office, he has created jobs, tripled Tennessee’s rainy day fund, decreased the state’s debt, and invested in education. This year, Gov....

States send less than half as many youth to residential facilities as they did in the late 1990s, but new data from the Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention show that many juveniles in out-of-home placements were not confined for serious and violent crimes. In 2015, 23 percent of youth in […]

After peaking in 2008, the nation’s imprisonment rate fell 11 percent over eight years, reaching its lowest level since 1997, according to an analysis of new federal statistics by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Thousands of communities and families across the country are still reeling from 2017—one of the most destructive and expensive years on record for natural disasters. Coastal and inland floods inundated a broad swath of the country—from California to Texas and Missouri to Florida—damaging homes, roads, and bridges, and closing many institutions, including schools.

This ongoing, occasional series features interviews with a variety of influential leaders who discuss how they became involved in criminal justice reform, how their views have evolved—sometimes in unexpected ways—and what’s needed to sustain progress.

The courts have found that the Met failed in its civic duty to serve victims of a heinous crime. As a society we will have to confront the role of the victim in the post-sentencing process tooThere is no doubt that the Metropolitan police committed terrible errors in their handling the case of John Worboys, […]

An off-duty Prince George’s County police officer was shot and killed Wednesday morning while helping a woman next door in an incident of domestic violence, the department’s police chief said. Cpl. Mujahid Ramzziddin, a 14-year veteran of the department, was fatally shot by a man with a shotgun...

Democrats are poised to reject three Republican bills to loosen restrictions on guns Wednesday as the national debate about firearms following last week’s high school shooting in south Florida has forcefully made its way into Colorado and the state legislature.

Each case demonstrates how the tools used to fight crime and measure crime trends in the United States are outdated. Even as certain kinds of crimes are declining, others are increasing — yet because so many occur online and have no geographic borders ...

The Dunwoody Police Department is currently looking for Laverne Harold Squires, age 79, a Dunwoody Resident. Squires is suffering from Alzheimers. He was last seen leaving his residence at approximately 4:30PM on Friday. He left in ...